Boy Moms Are Creepy Sadistic Women — But Are We Surprised?
When we’ve spent decades parading boys as the “better children than girls,” we should have known the outcome.
I hated my Aunt Harriet when I was a girl. She was the only aunt I never got along with. Whenever she came over, I would go and hide under the mango tree behind our kitchen until she left.
Aunty Harriet had six girls and two boys. The boys were her second and last child. Her daughters were gracious, beautiful and homely. They are all married now, except for the last girl, Georgina (37 years old).
I have a very good relationship with my aunt’s children. But I’m closer to Georgina and Pascal (the last child and boy). They both live in Austin while their siblings live on different continents.
I hated my aunt because she doted on her sons more than her daughters. And the most annoying part was that her wickedness extended to any girl her children were friends with. Even we, her nieces, didn’t escape her cruelty.
I remember one time we came back to the village for Christmas. My aunts often paid homage to my father as he was the eldest and practically raised his siblings after their parents died.
My aunt came over with her children. I hugged my cousins one after the other. My siblings did the same. The adults were watching by the side and chatting amongst themselves.
My Aunt Harriet was the only one who looked at us with disgust. Then she told my dad, “You need to teach your girls some manners. They shouldn’t be hugging their male cousins this way.“
Thank God my dad had travelled abroad and knew more about Western culture than his siblings. He told her that a hug was a warm greeting. We were between the ages of four and twelve. So it was an innocent hug.
Throughout Aunt Harriet’s visit, I noticed her indifference towards her female children. The girls were always busy– either cleaning or washing or cooking, while the boys were out with us, playing.
My aunt treated her sons like royalty. She breastfed her boys for three years but she barely breastfed her girls for a year because her husband insisted.
The boys had matching clothes, shoes and caps. They ate before their sisters and went to bed earlier than the girls. Her first son was more entitled and demanding. He made his sisters’ lives more miserable.
He would make different choices of food and change outfits three to four times a day because he was his mom’s favorite child. He got away with hitting his sisters, unlike the girls.
The weird part was when I saw my aunt tongue-kissing her eldest son when she was about to leave the house. It was a short tongue-in-and-out kiss, which looked like a normal thing for them and it seemed as if he liked it.
Pascal was different. He didn’t like being treated like a baby. He would help his sisters with their chores even though his mom had warned him not to. He would only give his mom hugs and pecks but his mom would force him to kiss her on the lips.
When her boys play with us, and a girl made body contact with them, you see my aunt from nowhere dragging the girl away from her son, calling the girl names like slut, prostitute, bitch, etc.
My dad and two of my other aunts warned her to stop using vulgar language around children but she didn’t listen. I didn’t know my Aunt Harriet was misogynistic until I got older.
Georgina would often hide in my house to escape her mother’s verbal and physical abuse. Her mother calls them sluts too so she got used to name-calling and body shaming from a very young age. Her mum had always favored her brothers more.
Georgina for a long time thought her mom wasn’t her biological mother because of her wickedness. When she got admission and moved to the hostel, she rarely visited home. Her holidays were spent at my house or in school just so she could avoid her mom.
After Georgina got married, she moved to Austin with her husband. Two years later, she brought her brother, Pascal, over. The two have always been best friends. Pascal would shield Georgina from their mom’s abuses even though he was younger than her.
As the concept of “Boy Mom” continues to trend, I couldn’t help but remember my Aunt Harriet and wonder why some mothers favor their male children over their female children.
A study conducted on 2500 parents revealed that 90 percent treated their male and female children differently. The study also revealed that mothers were twice as likely to be more critical of their daughters than their sons.
However, the toxic “Boy Mom” attitude is a dysfunctional cultural conception.
Growing up in a society that idolizes boys was problematic for me. I had to deal with my mum’s indifference until I was twenty-five because of an accident that resulted in me depending on my family.
I was the rebellious daughter while my younger sister was the obedient daughter. Therefore, she bore my mom’s unfair treatment more than I did.
My mum wasn’t a boy mom per se, however, she unconsciously overlooked some of my brother’s bad habits. She would make up excuses to justify why my brother smokes weed, or why he wouldn’t do the chores allocated to him.
My mom allowed my younger brother to have sexually romantic relationships with girls at the age of sixteen. But my younger sister, who was older than him, was forbidden from having a male friend until she was twenty-four.
When I told my mum that my brother was a smoker she didn’t believe me until my brother started hallucinating and almost went mad. She didn’t believe me when I told her my brother had started smoking again until she caught him red-handed in the act.
How a woman values her child depends largely on the mother’s personal history, including the relationship she has with her own mother. If a woman has never felt the love and affection of her own mother, she will most likely develop affection towards her child of the opposite sex.
This explains why Boy Moms depend on their sons for emotional support. It’s because their husbands aren’t fulfilling that role.
Because of the unhealthy emotional connection some mothers have with their sons, it becomes a problem when they grow up and become independent, find their own partner, and eventually start their own family.
Justifying boys bad behaviours and treating them more special than girls also develops a sense of entitlement in them.
Their entitlement can manifest as expecting undue attention and love from their sexual partners without reciprocating the same love and attention. At first glance, this entitlement can appear as misogyny. However, it’s more rooted in narcissism.
These boys mature into deadbeat fathers and Mama’s boys because they never learned to be responsible for anything. Their mothers are their nannies, their butlers, their lovers and their advisors.
Societal factors, like the “pride of having a male child.” can also influence the Boy Mom dynamics. Gaslighting moms when their boys misbehave is a normalized abuse that has been going on for ages.
Our society expects mothers to be perfect. We assume that mothers are responsible for shaping the behavior of children, especially boys. This is why we hold them responsible for their children’s mistakes.
Therefore, boys are not held accountable for their actions. But if it were girls, the situation would be different. Girls are blamed for not dressing properly, for talking too much or not sitting appropriately. We pass off boys’ inappropriate behaviors as “boys being boys.”
Although there’s nothing wrong with having a close relationship with your son. However, the relationship between a mother and her son should not replace the lack of love from your husbands nor should it jeopardize your son’s relationship with other women.
